... and fear the exposure of the lies and illusions within the carefully balanced society that has emerged over the last three hundred years as much as any traditionalist or conservative. And yet things are palpably beginning to fail. The US has a constitution that still permits lurches of adjustment to changed conditions we think of Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, even Reagan but the British system seems to offer us a different sort of lurch, from crisis to crisis with one step forward and two steps back. Hindsight and Truth But hindsight is a wonderful thing. After the invasion of Poland, Suez, the intervention of the IMF in the 1970s, the arrival of Maggie Thatcher, the Falklands War ...

... isn't as good a writer. Landau is a socialist and this is a socialist's view of America and the consequences of its imperialism. Landau also wants to convey the sheer absurdity and venality of much of the American Right. But that's been done already. How often do we need to be told of the idiocies of Jerry Falwell and Ronald Reagan, the cynicism of Karl Rove, or the horrors of consumerism as a way of life? Reading this I kept thinking, OK, but we know all this. But the 'we' in that last sentence is tiny. The other 99% of the English-speaking world doesn't know this; and the people for whom reading these essays ...

... the Yankees symbolised by Kissinger (held over from Nixon) and the Trilateralists (who appeared in Jimmy Carter's administration which succeeded Ford in 1976). Although he declines to use the word, this thread is American fascism; or militarism, any way: the subversion or supplanting of democracy by the military. Scott follows this thread through the Reagan years and clandestine plans for the 'continuity of government' (COG) after a variety of hypothesised national emergencies (Oliver North was involved at this juncture) the procedures by which democracy would be suspended and dissenters rounded-up and interned. He suspects, and tries to show by micro-analysis of the events around the White House just before, during ...

... the fact that their torturers were the CIA's own paid informants. Moreover, the Agency did its best to ensure that 'the torturers were shielded from any legal or political consequences.' Similarly, the covert war against Nicaragua involved a campaign of terror waged by CIA mercenaries that was nevertheless presented to the world as a liberation struggle. President Ronald Reagan celebrated 'the contras' as men in the same mould as the 'Founding Fathers' of the United States. This did not stop him trying to subvert the Constitution the Founding Fathers had drawn up in order to conduct his illegal war, something conveniently forgotten in the eulogies that accompanied his death. Moreover, as Greg Grandin writes of the ...

... ,(8) Roberts described Bush as 'thoughtful, charming and widely read'. Oh yes! Remember the briefing by the White press office last summer that Dubya was off for a holiday with Albert Camus' L'Étranger on his reading list?(9) There is a group of new books out in the US trying to represent Ronald Reagan as a wise and intelligent leader and not the dummy he appeared to be.(10) i There is section of the American political intelligentsia which is acutely discomfitted by the fact that genuinely stupid people can get to be president in the land of the brave and home of the free. Libya and Lockerbie In 'Lockerbie trial was a ...

... Royal Society) challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine its scientific consensus (The Guardian 20 September 2006). As do those wishing to represent 'big government', e.g. French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy pitching those on unemployment benefit against wage-earners, a throwback to Thatcherism( 'benefit scroungers') and Reaganism in US. See also Le Monde Diplomatique as quoted in The Guardian 2 May 2007. There was a fascinating article about a Ministry of Defence report envisaging the 'future strategic context' likely to face Britain's armed forces in 30 years time. This included a reference to 'the middle classes becoming revolutionary'. In Britain at least, many ...

... of Bush 2's foreign wars. He quotes from a Kirkpatrick essay of 1984, during which she muses that 'in the cool, reassuring plans of our founding fathers, informed by history and inspired by a passion for freedom, idealism and realism were closely interwoven'. Subsequently, as Grandin remarked in an interview,( [5]) Reagan was to elevate the Contras- the Nicaraguan anti-communist paramilitaries- into the 'moral equivalents of the US founding fathers'. Readers will have to decide on Grandin's case for the continuity of US policy against those who defend the recycled Reaganites as reformed and newly progressive. His latest book is essential reading, though, for the activist, student ...

... Israel at <conservativehome.blogs.com/ toryleadership/ files/dc_answers_to _cfi_questions.pdf> [4] A nod towards David Stockman's, The Triumph of Politics (London: The Bodley Head, 1986). This is a seriously interesting picture of the real workings of American politics at the highest level. The triumph of politics over ideology in the title concerned the Reagan presidential campaign talk of fiscal prudence. Stockman was Reagan's Budget Director and his incredulity at the tax cut the Reagan administration enacted without a matching cut in federal spending does him credit but makes him sound – for a Congressman! – astonishingly naive. [5] Murray's Website (frequently down) and a mirror of the documents are < ...

... Britain resisted the Soviet menace and tried to spread freedom.( [6]) Along the way he revisits old arguments. Take the opposition in the early 1980s to the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. For Kamm, these reflected'....a curious belief – reinforced by loose talk from a new President, Ronald Reagan – that a new generation of intermediate missiles was being deployed in order to fight a "limited" nuclear war in Europe. The notion was preposterous. The rationale for Nato's deployment was the opposite.' At best, Kamm hasn't done his homework. There was a good deal of nuclear war-fighting talk among the Pentagon and its satellite ...

... several years of Carter, having been elected by the Evangelicals for his first term, I realized that when he refused to endorse anti-abortion measures or come out against separation of church and state, or refused to invite Evangelicals to the White House, that he was not going to go to bat for us.'( [18]) Reagan, unlike Carter, hadn't been born again, and so in evangelical terms wasn't strictly speaking a Christian. (He was also keen on astrology, which is frowned on in evangelical circles in the normal run of things). Nevertheless Reagan appreciated the value of the evangelical vote and recognised that Falwell's organisation Moral Majority could deliver. At ...